HANDOFF.md: what a generated brief cannot say

Every workplan is done and nothing is in flight -- the session stopped at
a boundary, not mid-change -- so the risk on pick-up is not lost context
but MISREAD context.

Records the three findings most likely to be misread (attack_relief is
unreachable-then-real, not null; H1's rejection covers half of H1; the
scope module is inert in round one), what is waiting on ground-game
versus what is ours, the conventions a new session trips over (hub is a
read model; workplan status is active not in_progress; make vendor;
replays/ is gitignored), and the two habits that paid for themselves
repeatedly -- mutate every control, and test the path a player takes.

Linked from the README above the gates, since it should be read before
design — the finding register

  QUEUE (open findings)
    repro  F17  degenerate       raised       6d  ground-game
    repro  F18  inert            raised       6d  clay-borg
    repro  F24  inert            raised       5d  clay-borg
    repro  F25  inert            raised       4d  clay-borg
    repro  F26  inert            ruled        4d  ground-game
    repro  F27  unplayed         reported     4d  clay-borg
    repro  F31  unplayed         reported     4d  clay-borg
    repro  F30  degenerate       ruled        4d  ground-game

  NOTES (not reportable — GameDesign §3.1)
           F12  degenerate         11d
           F15  underdetermined     7d
           F21  degenerate          6d

  findings                       28   (+3 note(s))
  with a resolving reproduction  19/28 = 67%   target 100%
  open, lacking a reproduction   0   target 0
  reproductions green while open 0   target 0
  notes past 30 days             0   target 0
  closed (log)                   20   [U1, U2, U3, U4, U5, U6, U7, U8, U9, U10, F11, F13, F14, F16, F19, F20, F23, F22, F29, F28].

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

HANDOFF.md

@@ -0,0 +1,130 @@
+# Handoff — 2026-08-09
+
+Written at the end of the session that landed CB-WP-0043 through
+CB-WP-0050. **`.custodian-brief.md` is generated; this is not.** It says
+what a generated index cannot: what is true, what is merely reported, and
+what would be a mistake to assume.
+
+Start with `make all` (expect green), then `make design` for the finding
+queue and `make panels` for the current measurements.
+
+---
+
+## 1. Where the work stands
+
+**Nothing is in flight.** Every workplan is `done`; no task is `todo`.
+That is deliberate — the session was stopped at a boundary, not
+mid-change.
+
+The last four passes built one capability, in this order, and each
+depends on the one before it:
+
+| pass | what it made possible |
+|---|---|
+| CB-WP-0047 | all four Scenarios and all three Modes are selectable |
+| CB-WP-0048 | a configuration is a **point in aspect space**, not a package name |
+| CB-WP-0049 | policies that can *see* an objective and a module |
+| CB-WP-0050 | a panel that sweeps configurations and says what it could not measure |
+
+Before this, the engine dealt `SCN_01` and only `SCN_01`, and `Variant`
+was a three-armed enum that could not name a two-module configuration.
+
+---
+
+## 2. The three things most likely to be misread
+
+**(a) `attack_relief.self_soothe_ge4` is not "measured, no effect".** It
+is **unreachable in the printed game** — peak Stress never exceeds 2 and
+the gate is at 4 — and *real* once a `problem_stress` module supplies
+pressure (F31). Its panel row carries `← never fired: UNMEASURED` for
+exactly this reason. Do not read that row's numbers as a verdict on it.
+
+**(b) H1's rejection covers half of H1.** CB-EV-0030 measured H1 with
+bots that never attacked, so H1-B had no opportunity in any of those
+games. The rejection stands on flat pressure alone. Corrected to
+ground-game as GROUND-RPT-0007.
+
+**(c) `problem_stress.scoped` is inert in round one.** Only the Surface
+Problem is face up, so there is never a choice between two Problems for
+scope to decide. Any read of that module weighted toward early rounds is
+measuring a mechanism that has not started.
+
+---
+
+## 3. What is waiting on ground-game
+
+Not ours to move, and worth not pre-empting:
+
+- **F17** — ATTACK's degeneracy; a design judgement, open longest.
+- **F26, F30** — `ruled`, tracked on their side (GROUND-WP-0008).
+- **Unanswered asks:** the two in GROUND-RPT-0006 §5 and the reachability
+  question in GROUND-RPT-0007 §4.
+
+Reports are written into `../ground-game/reports/` and **left
+uncommitted** — their maintainer commits them. That is the established
+pattern, not an oversight.
+
+---
+
+## 4. What is ours
+
+### Blocked on capability, not effort
+
+**F27 — no policy models a rival playing their objective.** This is the
+*whole* of what keeps F27 open. The competitive modes are measured by
+seats that never anticipate an opponent, and no amount of additional
+measurement fixes that. Opponent modelling is the largest single item on
+the board.
+
+### Debt, small and dull
+
+- **F18 / F24 / F25** — the "engine hardcodes what the edition states"
+  family. F25 shrank when the threshold moved to the Scenario card
+  (CB-WP-0047); F24 is the Solution deck as a Rust literal.
+- **62 untagged literals** in `make facts-check` — reported, not failing.
+- **11 trial notes read `unrecorded`.** Permanent by choice: they predate
+  CB-WP-0046's marker stamp, and inventing provenance is the defect that
+  pass existed to avoid.
+
+### Named in workplans, never started
+
+- **A second game.** `clay-borg` claims to be a general engine and has
+  exercised exactly one. Everything built this week assumed that claim
+  without testing it. **My recommendation for what to do first.**
+- **Mode × module is unswept.** `module-panel` runs SHARED GROUND only,
+  and CB-EV-0033 showed the modes move *who wins*.
+- **Per-round effect** is unreported, which is where `scoped` lives.
+
+---
+
+## 5. Conventions a new session will trip over
+
+- **The State Hub is a read model.** Never `create_workplan` or
+  `create_task` by hand: write the file, commit, run `fix-consistency`
+  (its C-06 check registers it and writes the ids back).
+- **Workplan status is `active | done | paused`.** `in_progress` is a
+  *task* status; using it on a workplan 422s on every sync.
+- **`make vendor`** re-syncs the edition mirror from `../ground-game` and
+  regenerates the digest block by walking `editions/`. Upstream changes
+  several times a day; a red `edition-check` usually means run this.
+- **`replays/` is gitignored** — a build artifact, not a fixture.
+- **Reports to ground-game** are `GROUND-RPT-####`, written into their
+  `reports/`, with a clay-borg `evidence/CB-EV-####` as the upstream.
+
+---
+
+## 6. Two habits this session paid for repeatedly
+
+**Mutate every control before trusting it.** Three separate controls in
+this session were *vacuous* and said so only under mutation: a peek
+detector whose variation was invariant under what a violator reads; a
+"module-aware seat is ordinary under the baseline" check that swept
+positions where no ranking term could change the answer; and a panel that
+printed real-looking numbers for a module that had never fired. Each
+looked correct and proved nothing.
+
+**Test the path a player takes, not the helper.** `--module
+problem_deal.pressure_deck` played a full baseline game and reported
+success while every unit test of `resolve()` passed. CB-WP-0033 found the
+same shape and said it plainly: *only the integration test proves the
+driver.*

README.md

@@ -4,6 +4,13 @@ A rebuild from scratch simulation and games engine framework set up to assimilat
 
 Licensed under the Target Revenue Source License (TRSL V1C1) — see [LICENSE](LICENSE); canonical text lives in the org's `target-revenue` repository.
 
+## Picking the work back up
+
+**[`HANDOFF.md`](HANDOFF.md)** — written by hand at the end of each
+working session, unlike the generated `.custodian-brief.md`. It records
+what is true, what is only *reported*, and what would be a mistake to
+assume. Read it before `make design`.
+
 ## Running the gates
 
 ```sh